


How to Murder Your Best Friend

by lusilly



Series: Earth-28 [24]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Best Friends, Coming Out, Developing Friendships, Everyone Is Gay, F/M, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Issues, Lesbian Character, Other, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 00:20:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10842528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusilly/pseuds/lusilly
Summary: Damian can't stand to stay in Gotham anymore, so he applies to law school in California and moves in with Lian. Somewhere in between going to bars and picking up women and shooting the shit about sex and gender and superheroism, something grows between the two of them neither of them can really name.This fic is about gender, sexuality, and needing someone else's help to articulate things you've always sort of felt. It's about the differences between loving someone, and being in love with them. It's a record of two tumultuous years of Damian and Lian learning and unlearning things together.





	How to Murder Your Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to go more in-depth about the period in which Damian and Lian were living together. It's frequently referenced in Wheel in the Sky, and it's relatively early during this period that You Are What You Love (Not Who Loves You) happens. This fic also happens almost immediately after the fallout from Fiat iusticia. Please check out all those stories in the Earth-28 series on my profile!
> 
> Damian's bigender in E28, which you can learn more about if you follow me @lusilly on Tumblr. (His gender/sexuality tag is #oh mr wayne.) Damian and Lian are what I would call queerplatonic, but I'm not sure they'll ever really use that word. 
> 
> The choice of the title/poem mostly has to do with how they both are known to conflate violence and tenderness, fury and love, etc etc. In all E28 fics I will always use he/him pronouns for Damian in the prose, for clarity and also because that's what he prefers publicly for most of his life. Enjoy.

**How to Murder Your Best Friend**  
(unattributed)

 _With poisoned apple, comb, ring, garment,  
_ _Word in the ear._

 _How heavy she’ll be when I carry her stretched on my arms,  
_ _Elongated eyes, sunflower hair, questions clutching  
_ _My sleeve, kiss like a spoiled child’s, feathery  
_ _Cries._

 _I got to you first, you beautiful desperate  
_ _Bitch, I’ll say. Here’s  
_ _Passion, love, acclaim. Here’s your view  
_ _Of the kingdoms of earth, your open window to review the troops from.  
_ _I push her through it._

_This film can be stopped at any point;  
_ _We can run it backward.  
_ _Tonight outside my house I met my friend, hauling my  
_ _Sharp white crime. Hello, I say,  
_ _What’s that beautiful hard object? I ask._

 _And before I can count to ten she raises it high,  
_ _Slices it into my chest._

\---

_day 1_

            It was their first night together in what was to be their new apartment. Damian had found a penthouse suite a little further away with a beautiful view but an exorbitant price, and it had taken a few days of tense arbitration for Lian to talk him down. In the end she had convinced him to settle for a still-expensive but less absurd option closer to Stanford, where Damian would be starting law school at the end of the month. The apartment was an hour or so away from her childhood home, closer still to STAR Labs, where her father worked. She and Damian had spent the entire day setting up various security measures, including installing a landline of their own and suffering through an extended phone call with Oracle as she explained how to encrypt it to her highest standards. When she frequently had to put them on hold, some other urgent matter drawing her attention, Damian would roll his eyes impatiently and make a gagging motion towards Lian. But he worked well with Barbara Gordon, speaking with an ease Lian, who corresponded with Oracle mostly on business, hadn't known he possessed.

            By the time night fell, they were done with everything they could do in a day. They ordered takeout: Damian called and placed the order meticulously, asking Lian for every conceivable alteration she might want on her dish, then taking another ten minutes to decide what exactly he wanted. When he returned from picking it up, he set his motorcycle helmet on the counter and draped his leather jacket on the back of the only two chairs they currently owned. Digging for her own food, Lian found the receipt, and saw that Damian had tipped a solid 300%.

            She grinned up at him as he poured himself a glass of water from their Brita filter. Breaking apart the wooden chopsticks she’d found in the bag, she leaned back in her seat, placing her feet up on their new table.

            “Have a little respect, will you?” sighed Damian, returning to the table, offering her a glass. She declined, holding up her beer, and he placed it uncertainly halfway between them. He swatted at her feet. “This is a home, not a biker bar.”

            “No,” agreed Lian, without moving, “but that’d be bitchin’. We could totally do a full bar, like right,” she twisted around, scrutinizing the empty living room, “maybe right in the corner there? I mean we’d need to hire a bartender, but honestly, having a live-in bartender is like, early-twenties _goals_ -”

            “No bartender,” said Damian firmly, spooning his dish onto a portion of rice. “And if you want to install a bar, you’ll be the one paying for it.”

            “Can-do. You know I too am scion of a multimillionaire, right?”

            “A generation removed,” Damian pointed out. “And I believe my father is a billionaire, actually.”

            With a grin, Lian took her feet off the table and leaned in. “I think technically speaking, Tim is the billionaire.”

            Damian considered this for a moment, as if sizing up the suggestion in his mind. “Well,” he began, with an affected sigh, “while that may be technically true, he hasn’t really mastered the spirit of billionairedom, so I don’t think it counts.”

            Lian looked down at her food, poking at her chicken. “That’s you,” she said coolly, holding back a laugh, “the billionaire dom. Right?”

            Grinning, she looked up at him then to see him rolling his eyes at her. But there was a smile on his face. This was, she thought, so much easier than she had anticipated.

            They talked for a while, shooting the shit, then somehow taking a distinct turn towards more serious matters. Neither one of them brought up Iris, each dreading the moment when the other would. Still, Lian told him about this restaurant on the island of Crete, maybe her favorite she’d ever been to; she told him about visiting Paris, seeing the Eiffel Tower covered in twinkling lights in the middle of the night. This all veered towards dangerous territory, towards talking about the time in which they were maybe not friends, in which they did not speak except for occasional requests for money. Damian had not yet fully grappled with the revelation that Lian had been working at times for his mother, nor, Lian suspected, had he yet fully matured enough to talk about their respective relationships with Iris without sounding petty and jealous and insecure.

            But there were other things they could talk about. They’d spent the past few months adventuring around the States, setting up safehouses, taking on missions together. Fighting side-by-side. It felt like they were teenagers again, a good, happy, warm feeling like belonging. It had taken some time, but now here they were, a decade after they first met, attempting now to actually get to know one another without something as silly as a girl getting in between the two of them.

            So as Lian finished telling Damian about an art exhibit she’d seen in Vienna once which she thought he would really like, Damian merely dipped his chopsticks back down to his food.

            “What did you do when you found your mother?” he asked, without meeting her eye, as casually as if asking the weather.

            _What did you do_ , not _Did you ever_. Of course Damian Wayne knew that Cheshire had been apprehended. But she thought she knew what he meant, and it wasn’t strictly a question about the completion of a mission.

            Lian’s eyes watched his, although he would not look back at her. The apartment was very quiet, and dark beyond the limits of the dining area where they sat. On the other side of the kitchen, by the entryway, a small device blinked green, on and off, on and off, on and off, evidence that their security system was armed.

            “I took her in,” she said shortly. “Mostly by myself, like a big girl.”

            “She went quietly?”

            “I mean, no. But I’m good at my job, so I figured it out.”

            “Where is she now?”

            “Supermax somewhere.” Lian shrugged, leaning back in her chair. “Maybe Belle Reve, maybe not. I feel like she’s gotten out of there enough times that they really need to find someplace else, but you could say the same thing about Arkham, and that hellhole’s still up and running.”

            “They’ve reformed it some,” Damian said, with a note of mildness, as if he was only half thinking about this, as if his mind was somewhere else. “Gen pop’s been removed, and those that are left are held with intent to rehabilitate.”

            “Hard to intend to rehabilitate an evil assclown like the Joker.”

            “Yes, it would be.” Absently Damian scratched at his eyebrow. “Last I heard, Hush put a bullet in his eye. He was transferred to a secure hospital facility.”

            “Since that’s not a recipe for disaster or anything.”

            Damian gave her a small smile. “People never learn. Should’ve just let him bleed out on the floor.”

            This was uncharacteristic of Damian, who generally avoided such gore even in jokes, for genuine fear of judgement by those who knew what carnage he had been responsible for in his youth. But this was a new side of Damian, Lian thought, something she had never known before, intimate, comfortable, trusting. She was flattered, and if she thought about it, a little overwhelmed. If he expected her to reciprocate in kind, he was already overestimating the depth of their friendship.

            After a pause filled mostly with the sounds of eating, Lian asked, “Hey Damian?”

            He glanced up at her, mouth full. “Hm?”

            Almost as if in accusation, she held her chopsticks up at him, pointing towards his face. “Here’s something I’ve always kind of wondered. Not to be, like, weird, or anything,” she lowered the chopsticks, “but – so – you and like – Colin.”

            Damian’s expression didn’t change, even though he knew what she was getting at.

            “Like a million years ago,” she continued, poking at a mound of rice, “I heard from my dad, who heard from Dick, that you kind of had a thing with him, and I-”

            “And why, pray tell,” interrupted Damian, his voice curt, “did your father feel it necessary to let you in on this particular piece of information?”

            Lian waved this concern away. “My dad is constantly updating me on anything gay in our immediate social circle, that’s nothing. Besides, I think he was kind of proud of you. It wasn’t, like…” she paused, wondering how to say this delicately, “…I mean, it wasn’t like a big secret that you were out of commission, you know. He knew I gave a shit about you and he was hopeful that a relationship might mean getting you out of your post-breakup funk.”

            Coolly, Damian said, “It wasn’t a relationship.”

            In her chest, Lian’s heart fell. “Ah,” she said wisely, nodding her head. “Just a little fucking among friends, huh? A good blowie to take the edge off, no homo and all that?”

            When she glanced back up at Damian, his expression was condescending and severe, as if he were disappointed in her for the mere suggestion. In defiance, she stared back at him, daring him to prove her wrong.

            Finally, he said, “It was, as I think my previous legal trouble has demonstrated, a perilous time for me. I made bad decisions, and the unfortunate arrangement I briefly had with Colin was one of them.”

            “Surprised he didn’t fuck off as soon as you stopped coming around,” Lian said quickly, holding her beer close to her chest. “I would’ve as soon as I figured out you were just some straight asshole looking get off.” She took a quick sip of her beer, almost in disbelief that she’d actually said what she was thinking.

            But Damian just watched her warily.

            “Colin didn’t end up getting his feelings hurt,” he said, his voice low. He bowed his head as if to acknowledge Lian’s point. “I did.”

            A crease in her brow, she looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”

            “You know Lucas?”

            Lian nodded. “What do you guys call him, Lux?”

            “That’s him.” Damian paused, hesitating. He took a sip from his glass of water. When he spoke again, he sounded slightly awkward, which seemed foreign in Damian’s usually classy-casual voice. “The two of them met when Colin and I were still…an item. When I found out I didn’t speak to Colin for a month.” He shrugged. “I suppose in the heat of the moment I didn’t realize Colin and I weren’t…exclusive,” he said the word with a little cringe that Lian assumed he didn’t mean to show. “But you’re right, I think. It was more about me than it was about him, anyway.”

            “So you _did_ want to get with him.”

            “Given my state of mind at that moment, I probably would’ve taken anyone.”

            “So you’re one of those…situational homosexuality types.”

            Damian gave her a grin, but it looked easy, genuine. “I think the word is bisexual, Lian.”

            “Huh,” said Lian, impressed. “You and Irey both, huh?”

            Instantly Lian regretted the comment, a frisson of anxiety shooting down into her stomach – but Damian just let out a soft laugh.

            “Yeah. I suppose so,” he said, and the look in his eyes was gentle, like forgiveness. “Me and Irey.”

\---

_day 78_

            “But you can’t hit on any women,” said Lian, beseeching Damian as she stopped on the sidewalk to lean on him in order to adjust a heel. “Not on any women. It’s a gay bar.”

            Amused, Damian looked down at her as she tugged at the back of her shoe and asked, “You don’t think any bisexual women go to gay bars?”

            “I don’t know, probably,” she said, straightening up again and smoothing down her dress. “But either way I think they’re there for other women.”

            “Fair enough,” said Damian, nodding. He was still a little indignantly shocked at himself that he’d never made it to a gay club before, though part of him thought his indiscretion a couple years ago should could as a gay club, then he rebuked himself for thinking so. He tried not to think about that. “Do drag queens count?”

            “Oh, no,” said Lian, flashing her ID at the bouncer, bypassing the line. The bouncer grinned and asked how she was doing, then let her and Damian in, wishing them a good time. “Queens are fair game,” she said, loud above the music, then she added, “and you know what I mean by that.”

            He leaned in, his face next to her ear. “You’re technically a Harper, not a Queen, you know.”

            Then she pushed his face away, blowing a raspberry. “The fucking nerve, honestly,” she said loudly to him, then she grinned and dragged him over to the bar, where she ordered drinks for them both.

            Some time later, neither of them had even started trying to dance, but they were laughing together at the bar. “Do you _remember_ ,” wheezed Lian, in between fits of laughter, “fuck, do you remember – that time we met up in Hungary, or some shit, and you ordered a fucking Manhattan like a little bitch?”

            “There’s absolutely nothing little bitchy about a Manhattan,” insisted Damian, vodka tonic in hand. “I didn’t realize you were so judgmental when it came to your alcohol, is that something you pick up, living in a sober household?”

            “Oh, you tell me,” she shot back, words dripping with venom. “Your old man drinks Shirley Temples and has to fake drunk.”

            “Which is a skill,” Damian pointed out, “in and of itself.”

            They both sipped their drinks.

            “You know,” Damian began, “my mother used to say, it isn’t a man’s-”

            “Oh, fuck,” said Lian, interrupting him loudly, turning around to face the bar. “Down it, little bitch,” she said, tapping the bottom of his glass as he took another drink. “New drinking game, shots every time you mention your mom.”

            Dutifully, Damian downed his drink. “I was only going to say,” he restarted, “her advice on intoxication was some of the most normal-”

            Lian made a loud buzzer sound with her mouth. “Two shots,” she said, handing both his and the one she’d ordered for herself over to him.

            He took them both quickly and professionally, shooting one after the other then letting out a quiet breath as it burned its way down. Lian was impressed. “Nice,” she said. “Mommy teach you how to do that too?”

            Damian grinned, the look in his eyes growing thick and filmy with impending drunkenness. He turned around to face the bar, holding up one hand. “Bartender!” he called, and Lian laughed but covered her face, embarrassed. “Another shot!”

            It took a lot of alcohol to get Damian smashed, but smashed he became. When he wandered out to the dance floor Lian reluctantly decided it was best to stick with him, make sure he didn’t get into any trouble. On the contrary, however, trouble seemed to stay far out of his way; and while calling him a _good_ dancer may be too generous, he seemed better at it in close contact. At one point Lian found him caught between a queen and an older guy, bearded, grizzled, shirtless, and Damian leaned his head back and kissed the other man on the mouth, tongues mingling with next to no hesitation. She personally found it kind of gross, and ended up sticking kind of closer to him after that.

            When Damian finally looked around, apparently self-aware enough to catch a glimpse of Lian in his peripheral vision, he grinned and extracted himself from his current dance partner. He went over to her, interrupting Lian’s eye contact with a hot butch girl on the other side of the bar which was, she had no doubt, about to graduate into, _Can I buy you a drink?_

“Thank you,” shouted Damian over the music, leaning in towards Lian’s ear. She kind of flinched away, rubbing her eardrum. “For bringing me with you.”

            “You’re welcome,” she told him, patting him on the shoulder. “You really don’t have to yell, I’m right here, I can hear you.”

            He then shocked her by taking her hands with his, trying to get her to dance. It was a nice gesture, she supposed, but it was kind of awkward and she couldn’t remember the last time she had any desire to dance with a _guy_ , so she just kind of pulled her hands away.

            “Maybe you’ve had enough for tonight, big boy,” she said, patting him on the back, then trying to tug him towards the bar.

            Holding on to one of her hands, he stopped her, pulled her back, and kissed her on the lips.

            It only lasted a few seconds before someone shouted, “ _Hey!_ ” and Damian stumbled backwards, reeling from a punch thrown by the butch girl Lian had almost talked to. Stunned, Lian stared down at him as some of the other club-goers crowded around her, asked if she was OK. On the floor, Damian’s eyes rolled hazily, finally locking on her. He looked confused.

            While Lian called a Lyft, Damian sat on the curb. He threw up once, hanging his head between his knees. When she tugged him into the car she did so gently. They didn’t make friendly conversation with their driver on the way home, but Lian always hated doing that anyway so it was kind of a relief.

            By the time they made it back to their apartment, Damian seemed apologetic and weirdly sober already. She unlocked the door and disarmed their security as he closed the door behind them. The apartment was still dark. When the green blinking light resumed, Lian went to the cabinet and took out a glass, then filled it with cold water. Turning around, she stood at the kitchen island, glass in hand.

            “Drink up,” she said, lifting it slightly towards Damian. He watched her warily, his dark eyes inscrutable in the low light. “It’s good for you.”

            From the door, Damian told her, “I don’t usually get hangovers.”

            “Well.” She shook the glass a little. “You’re not seventeen anymore, kiddo. C’mon, it’s good for you.”

            Resignedly, looking like an injured puppy, albeit something hulking and dangerous like a wolf- or hyena-puppy, Damian crossed the kitchen and took the glass Lian offered. He took a long draught, then put it down on the counter. There was silence.

            “I’m sorry,” he said, but Lian interrupted.

            “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s OK.”

            “It’s not,” he continued, a grimace on his face. “It really isn’t.”

            The pause between them might’ve been awkward. Lian was avoiding his gaze, but she shook her head and reached out and knocked him gently on the shoulder. “It’s fine,” she said again. “You got frisky at a bar. It fucking happens, Damian, don’t get weird about it.”

            He took another long drink of water. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

            “I said it’s _fine_.”

            He started to shake his head very slightly, over and over again, not stopping. “I’m…not…”

            Lian didn’t know what he was trying to say exactly, but it all seemed to be a little indecent, the implications of a happy drunken kiss way, way more intense than they needed to be to her. And she _had_ been the one getting kissed, hadn’t she? Shouldn’t _she_ be the one feeling weird and violated right now, not him?

            She went to the fridge, took out the Brita filter again, and refilled his glass. Placing it between them, she kept her hand on the handle, if only to give her something else to hold her attention.

            “I’m supposed to be better than that,” said Damian, abruptly. She glanced at him. “I’m supposed to be – over that.”

            Something felt brittle inside of Lian’s chest, strange and crinkling like a leaf browning in the fall on fast forward.  _You never hurt anybody_ , she wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t, because she did not know for sure.

            “Hey,” said Lian, leaning against the counter. “It’s not like you grabbed some random girl half your size and forced your tongue down her throat. You kissed _me_.”

            “Which is worse,” he groaned.

            “Which is _better_ ,” she pointed out. “It’s not like I’m defenseless or anything, and you might have noticed _I_ wasn’t the one who punched you.”

            “I know you didn’t,” murmured Damian. “People freeze.”

            Yes, people do. This was an awfully good argument against Damian, that damning moment of inaction before Lian’s brain caught up with what was happening evident of shock, of Damian’s loose and irreverent consideration paid to consent.

            She’d never kissed Damian, but the first time they met he’d taken off his t-shirt and given it to her to cover up. She and the other kids in the trafficking ring had been mostly naked. Too big at fourteen to interest the group in that particular capacity, Damian had instead gotten himself recruited by the group and tried to take it down from the inside.

            Neither plan had worked, so they’d had to come up with something else, from scratch, together. They never told any of the other Titans of this first mission, never told Iris, not even in their respective vulnerable moments of puppy love confession with her. It was a strange sort of not-secret, something they never talked about but silently informed their every encounter, respect blended with derision blended with an awkward intimacy neither of them really wanted.

            Then there was the fact that not a year ago now Hush had trapped them, chained their hands and intended to strip them naked and take incriminating photos, outing Damian as Robin and destroying his reputation in one fell blow.

            It was no real wonder, then, given their history, that this was such a particularly sore spot. Part of Lian wanted to appreciate Damian’s sensitivity, but she somehow still felt annoyed, like he was making a mountain out of a molehill. The fact was that he _had_ kissed her without her consent, that was irrefutable – but somehow in her head she differentiated this from Damian grabbing someone else, which would’ve been bad, would’ve made her furious. It was the same, essentially, but somehow it felt different. She couldn’t figure out why.

            Damian lifted the glass to his lips and drained the water, pouring it down his throat. Then he said, lowly, “I understand if you no longer feel – safe – living with me, and believe me, I’m being sincere when I say that I can leave by-”

            “Oh, shut the fuck up,” said Lian. Pouring another glass of water she began, “Listen, it’s not the first time somebody’s surprised me with a kiss and life would be boring if it were the last. And yeah,” she continued patiently, nodding for emphasis, “consent is sexy, and necessary, and all of that, but a girl can’t live on caviar alone. Once in a while you want your partner to just grab you and plant a wet one right on you.”

            It was bad phrasing, and Lian made a face after she said it, thinking that she was beginning to sound like an obnoxiously straight college frat guy. She didn’t _mean_ it that way, not really, but she didn’t know what else to say to Damian, how else to explain the fact that she wasn’t actually mad.

            But he just watched her, apparently oblivious to all that nuance.

            “Your partner, though,” he echoed. “That’s different.”

            “I mean, yeah,” said Lian, nodding. “I guess the big problem here is, just, I mean.” She gestured vaguely at herself. “I’m super gay. Which you know. So you kissing me is just kind of like…a dick move.”

            “I’m sorry,” said Damian, for the third time.

            She shook her head, waving this away with her hand. “I already said it was OK. You were drunk, so I guess technically there was no consent either way, right?”

            “But I-”

            “ _And_ ,” she added, interrupting his self-pitying protest, “now I know that Damian Wayne tastes like peach Schnapps, so.” She grinned at him. “We’re good, kiddo.”

            He watched her warily. “Please,” he said. “I feel terrible.”

            “Yeah, I can fucking tell,” she replied. “How does this sound?” She raised the glass of water. “I get to throw this in your face, and it’ll be cold and ruin your hair. Then we both go to bed and forget about this whole fucking mess. And find a new bar to go to.”

            At her final comment, he began to shake his head. “You don’t have to-”

            “That one was shitty anyway,” she said, holding up the water. “Pucker up, buttercup.”

            He looked at her for a second, then a small smile tugged onto his lips. He squeezed his eyes shut, and Lian hopped on to the counter to reach across it and pour the water directly on top of his head, and he looked so stupid that she started laughing, then he laughed a little too.

            “Clean this up,” said Lian, gesturing at Damian then heading towards the shared bathroom. “See you in the morning, big boy.”

            She left Damian in the dark kitchen, dripping water onto the floor.

\---

_day 112_

            “God,” said Lian, holding one of Damian’s big hands in her own, carefully applying a layer of clear polish onto his nails. “Your cuticles are fucking immaculate. Do you get manicures?”

            “Yes,” answered Damian, leaning across the table, watching her work. “My father does too. I probably don’t have to tell you that our work isn’t exactly kind to our hands, so we take extra precautions to cloak any damage.”

            “You ever get a French manicure?”

            “No,” said Damian. “Not until now, I suppose.”

            “Well, Snoop Dogg did it a while ago,” said Lian matter-of-factly, taking his other hand. “So you’re in good company. And my dad used to let me do it to him when I was little, but he had shitty nails, so yours is going to look better. Actually,” she took out her phone, opened Snapchat, and twisted around to take a selfie with Damian in the back. “Smile,” she told him, and he did, and then she turned back around, captioned it, _My boy’s getting his nails did_ , and sent it to her dad and a cadre of their closest friends.

            She sent it to Damian too, and his phone dinged. Carefully picking up his phone so as not to smudge the first layer of polish on his nails, he opened the Snap, watched it for the entire ten seconds.

            Then he looked up at her. “I don’t think this is that weird,” he said.

            She glanced at him. “What?” she asked, with a little smile. “What do you mean?”

            Damian gestured at the hand which Lian was still working on. “Asking a friend to do this for you. It’s not that weird.”

            “I didn’t say it was weird,” replied Lian. “What are you talking about? Like, I’m gay, I have gay guy friends, believe me, it isn’t weird. I’m doing you a favor, like.” She gave an uncertain laugh. “Like I thought I’d be convincing _you_ it’s not weird.”

            Damian didn’t say anything, his mouth a tight line.

            She watched him for a moment, trying to understand that look. Then she went back to his nails. “You’re the one being weird,” she said. “I mean, this is a step in the right direction to get you the fuck out of the Batcave and start figuring out that not everything is a threat to your masculinity. And believe me, I’m going to be routinely checking your Grindr account, and if you fucking _dare_ stick _No femmes_ on there-”

            “Why would I do that?” asked Damian, almost impatiently. “I like women, too.”

            “You don’t gotta be a woman to be a gay femme,” Lian pointed out. “All that hashtag-masc-for-masc stuff is just gay men refusing to confront their own internalized misogyny.” She paused, considered this, then added, “I don’t know if internalized is the right word if they’re not actually women, but you get my point. Anyway. Don’t be like that.”

            “I will try not to let my internalized misogyny get the best of me, yes.” He watched her work. “What are you?”

            “What am I?”

            “Femme, butch. I understand there to be a spectrum.”

            Lian let out a bark of laughter. “You talk about sexuality like you learned it all from a Wikipedia page,” she told him. “I know you had gay friends back home, did they really never teach you anything?” When it became clear he wasn’t going to answer this, she continued, “Well, Damian, my official lesbian card I got when I was inducted into the lesbian secret society said I’m femme, so I guess that answers that question.”

            He gestured at her short hair, the vestigial bleached pink almost grown out entirely. “Not even with the hair?”

            “Short hair’s a lesbian thing in general,” she answered with a shrug. “Not strictly butch. Besides, it doesn’t really matter anyway, it’s not like they sort you onto team. Look at Iris, she’s not really either.”

            Damian pointed out, “I thought we established Iris was bi.”

            “Yeah, I mean,” Lian waved one hand, “I’m including her in dubya-el-dubya. Woman-loving-woman, it’s like a catch-all term. I had a friend in high school who used to call it _sapphic_ , which was pretentious but cute. Someone who’s not necessarily a lesbian but still like girls, that’s all it means.”

            “Not a lesbian, and likes girls,” said Damian, holding a finger up for each qualification thoughtfully. “Am I included?”

            She gave him a look. “You _know_ what I mean.”

            He let her continue painting his nails. “I do.”

            “Whatever,” she said, returning to her work with great care. “You’re behind on a lot of gay culture, Damian, I’m kind of surprised.”

            “How so?”

            “Because you usually know everything,” she answered, as if this were obvious. “Not really used to feeling like I’m the smartest one in the room when I’m around you, but you know,” she laughed, “lately things are changing up. Hey, you know what I thought back when you kissed me?”

            His eyebrows raised, and he seemed to shrink away from her touch, which was fine because she was finished with that hand. She looked up, meeting his gaze firmly, no room for his fear or insecurity now. Quietly, he asked, “What did you think?”

            “I was like, oh, shit,” she said, digging through a plastic tub full of nail polish to find a French pink. “Is kissing one of those gold star things?”

            Damian watched her. “Gold star?”

            “Yeah, you know.” She picked out the perfect color, then gestured for Damian to give her his other hand again. “So a gold star lesbian, since you apparently don’t know, means that she’s never slept with a man. Which,” she gestured towards herself, “I am. But I don’t know if there’s a whole other standard for kissing, you know? ‘Cause in that case you just ruined it for me.”

            She grinned at him. Damian didn’t return the grin, but he no longer moped over the unfortunate kiss: instead he felt strangely resistant to the notion in general, thinking that there were a lot of ways the loss of a gold star didn’t seem exactly fair.

            “Sorry,” he began, awkwardly, but he fell silent at a shake of Lian’s head.

            “It’s fine,” she said, again. “It’s kind of a stupid concept anyway. There are grown-ass women out there who didn’t really figure things out until they’d been married to men for ten years. Can you imagine?” she asked Damian seriously, with faint disgust on her face. “Taking dick you didn’t actually like for a goddamn decade? Jesus.”

            She shook her head mournfully, carefully applying paint to Damian’s nails.

            “I feel like a darker color would’ve gone better with your skin tone,” she said, scrutinizing her work. “Anyway. My point being, I got really lucky.”

            “I’m sorry, did you skip something?” asked Damian mildly. “Lucky how?”

            Lian scratched at the side of Damian’s nail, removing a trace of polish she’d accidentally brushed onto his skin. “I’ve known I was gay since I was like, ten years old. And my dad’s always been really good about it. I came out to him when he was giving me the Talk, and he straight-up just switched gears and kept going.” She grinned up at Damian, with a little bit of shyness that surprised him. Talking about her past made her this way sometimes, self-conscious about admitting things to him. It always snuck up on him, abrupt and jarring.

            She glanced up at him.

            “Your dad know?” she asked.

            Damian shook his head, his eyes still fixed on Lian’s hands as she painted his fingernails. Then, as if he felt compelled to answer her somehow, he said, “Ellen did.”

            “Yeah,” laughed Lian, “I’d fucking hope so. It’s the kind of thing you really should tell your fiancée.”

            There was a beat of silence, and then Damian corrected her. “Ex-fiancée.”

            She didn’t reply right away. She finished one hand, then set it aside and reached out to grab his other hand, drag it towards her. While Damian watched, his expression not sad but maybe a little tired, she blew on the clear coating, testing that it was completely dry.

            “You’re too fucking young to get married, anyway,” she said. “Enjoy the freedom for a while, OK? You have plenty of time.”

            With the heel of his hand, he rubbed the ball of his left cheek, just beneath his eye. “It was a bad idea anyway,” he admitted. “The optics of a wedding after all that would’ve been terrible. And I couldn’t have stayed in Gotham. I know she wanted to.”

            “Have you talked to her since?”

            “No.” He didn’t say anything for a moment. “People were saying things about her.”

            Lian knew this. She hadn’t wanted to be the one to bring it up, but Gotham wasn’t kind to the Waynes, especially not after everything that had recently come to light about Damian. Because of their age the big story had been that Ellen was a gold-digger, a cradle-robber, looking to pin down the most eligible bachelor in Gotham before he turned twenty-three.

            Somewhere along the line, though, some gossip rag had gotten wind of the fact that Ellen was trans. That had been ugly. Not as bad as it may have been, say, ten years ago – but not great, especially not for someone like Ellen, who valued her privacy, who was new to the public eye. Lian was sure Damian had asked her before they announced their engagement if she would talk to reporters first, so they could break it on their own terms. Evidently Ellen had elected not to do so. Though Lian deeply respected that decision, the fact that Damian had even asked probably also had something to do with Ellen leaving.

            Lian felt bad for Ellen, and for Damian. At the end of the day, they both deserved to be happy. She couldn’t speak for Ellen, but Damian obviously was not.

            “Well,” said Lian, cutting off the gloomy silence. “If she _does_ get in touch…give her my number, OK?” She grinned up at Damian, and gave him a wink.

            He laughed at that. It may have been a pity laugh, or a laugh with intent to signal that they should move on to the next topic of conversation, but it was still a laugh. She caught herself smiling at him, distracted from her careful work on his nails. There was a very light feeling inside of her chest, and even though she’d finished with his hand, she for some reason didn’t want to let it go. In her touch, he turned his hand around, clasping his fingers loosely around hers.

\---

_day 203_

            “You should go by something else,” said Lian, picking up the Escrima stick off the ground from where it had rebounded, hard, off a thug’s head. The man had crumpled into a heap in the alleyway, and Lian tested that he was unconscious by tentatively poking him with her foot before she tossed the stick back to Damian. It was dark out except for the glow of omnipresent city lights, and they were both back in uniform for the first time in a while. Jai had called them a few days ago about a case north of them, in a smallish city tucked between misty mountains. It hadn’t taken very long to take care of, and they’d stayed an extra night, mostly because it’d been a long while since they went out on patrol. It felt nice, natural; a return to what they knew.

            But she suspected it was a little alienating for Damian, who had run far, far away from Gotham, from the Batman, presumably from Robin.

            “That’s three points for me, by the way,” said Lian, kneeling down to zip tie the guy’s wrists.

            “What are you talking about?” asked Damian, tucking the Escrima stick back into its holster on his back. “I knocked him unconscious, those points are mine.”

            “Mm-mm.” She reached down to the guy’s neck and pulled out a tiny dart. “You and I hit him at the same time. And, please – if you bonked him in the head with a stick hard enough to knock him out cold, that would cause real brain damage. Mine just put him to sleep, so I think I deserve an extra point and a half for being, like, fucking humane about it.”

            “Watch your language in uniform, Arsenal.”

            “Fuck off,” she told him, “this isn’t Star City, kids aren’t lining up around the block to get my autograph. I have no social responsibility whatsoever.”

            She grinned up at him, and he keyed a commlink, alerting the local police of the potential mugger they’d just apprehended. The woman he’d been following had already taken off running down the block, unused to vigilante heroes in her city.

            They headed back to their respective motorcycles, Damian listening into the police radio chatter through a commlink. “It’s slow out there,” he said to Lian. “I suppose this place isn’t exactly Gotham, isn’t it?”

            “No,” Lian agreed. “And now that we’ve rid it of all its big bads, I kinda think all that’s left is, like, saving kittens from trees.”

            “Not an unimportant duty.”

            “Oh, God, of course not. Really nothing out there more important than saving pussy, Robin.” She grinned at Damian, and he rolled his eyes, starting to get on his bike. Lian reached out and stopped him, pulling him back. “No, hey,” she said, her voice a little whine. “I don’t want to go home yet. Let’s get some snacks and hang out a while, see if anything else comes up.”

            The lenses of his mask obscured his eyes, but Lian thought she could still catch the hesitance there, the wariness. “That’s not exactly protocol, Arsenal.”

            “Yeah, but fuck protocol. You just said, this place isn’t Gotham so we don’t have to run by Gotham’s rules. Hey, I’ll meet you up there,” she gestured to the nearest tallest building, with the ledge of the roof visible above them. “Give me ten dollars and five minutes.” She pawed at his belt, poking at the compartments. “Didn’t you used to keep cash in this thing? My pockets are all full of equipment, I don’t have any room for-”

            Damian reached out and caught her hand by the wrist. The lid of the small compartment she’d just opened fell back down to hide its contents, and with his other hand Damian sealed it with a little _snap_.

            She’d made a mistake. She could tell.

            “Hey,” she said again, with a little uncertainty. “Sorry. Ha-ha, I forgot about the last time I fucked with your utility belt. You know, back when I almost killed you? Yeah. Sorry.” She paused. “I wasn’t thinking.”

            He let her go. “It’s fine,” he said. Gesturing at the spot she’d indicated before, he said, “I’ll meet you up there.”

            “OK, cool.”

            “Arsenal.”

            She looked at him. He dug his hand into a different hidden compartment on his belt, and produced a twenty dollar bill.

            Lian grinned at him, taking it out of his hand. “Thanks.”

            On the rooftop a few minutes later Lian handed Damian a bag of Hot Cheetos and a chamomile tea, since she knew he didn’t drink coffee. He took the lid off and blew gently into the paper cup, sitting on the roof of the building, his legs hanging off the edge. She joined him, sipping her own coffee black.

            “So,” she said, at the same moment he began, “What did you-?”

            They both stopped, awkwardly gestured for the other to continue, and then Lian tried to break the tension with a fake laugh and said, “Seriously, you go first.”

            He watched her, not quite unhappily but with a certain patina of reluctance she wasn’t used to seeing in him anymore. Maybe it was something about the mask that brought it out so acutely, something about seeing him in his old uniform.

            “I was just going to ask,” he said. “You said something before, in the alley. We were distracted by the points.”

            “Oh,” she replied, nodding. “Yeah, I was just going to say – you should think about using another name. You’re pretty far from your hometown, which means you’re pretty far from Batman, which means that you don’t have to be Batman- _and_ -Robin anymore. All your brothers graduated by your age, why shouldn’t you?”

            He looked at her for a long moment. Then he blinked down at his tea. “Actually,” he began, carefully, “I’ve been thinking about that, sort of.”

            “OK, great. Any ideas?”

            He lifted one hand to his head, running his fingers through his hair. His gloves covered up his fingers and his nails, but in any case they were no longer painted. Before going out on a mission he’d painstakingly removed all evidence of polish from his nails, which Lian had never done in her goddamn life, and when she asked him what the fuck he was doing all he’d said to her had been, “Take nothing into the field, Lian,” which was so fucked up it sounded like his father spontaneously possessed him for a second. And besides, she knew it was bullshit.

            Earlier, when she’d been tugging at his utility belt, searching for cash, she’d accidentally caught a glimpse of two unmistakably orange plastic bottles. Prescription medication. _Take nothing into the field_ , her ass.

            “I like the name Robin,” he said, almost cautiously. “My brothers merely adopted it, but I was born for it. Raised with the intention that I would one day inherit it.”

            “I mean,” interrupted Lian, “I honestly think that’s overselling your mom’s intentions a little bit, but continue.”

            He glanced at her. Below them the city was mostly dark. Lian had tuned her commlink to the police radio while buying coffee at 7-11 and kept it on low volume in her ear. Mostly it broadcasted silence and static. It was cloudy above them, obscuring the stars and the moonlight. Maybe that was a good thing. Too many times during clear skies had Damian pointed out constellations, always ending up on Perseus, pointing out the Demon Star, which was dramatic and by the sixth or seventh time kind of exhausting. Clouds, then, were a relief.

            “I always intended on leaving the life, you know,” he said. He sounded vacant, his voice devoid of its usual depth. “I had all sorts of – ideas about starting a family. First with Impulse, then with Ember.”

            “You can say their real names,” Lian said, trying not to roll her eyes. “Like I know you’ve been trained your whole life not to, but come on. We’re in some random-ass city where nobody knows you or them. It’s cool.”

            Even though he nodded, Lian knew he couldn’t and he wouldn’t. Still, she thought it was worth it to voice the reassurance out loud.

            “But,” he began again. “If I did leave – I’ve thought sometimes…” he looked up at the sky, at the moon hanging behind the clouds, turning gray into silvery white. “Maybe I’d want to keep the name.”

            “That’d be, like, way fucking obvious,” said Lian, taking another sip of her coffee. “I mean I know most people already _know_ , but I feel like it’s just in bad taste to take the name when you retire. You know?” She laughed. “Like, I’m sorry potential future members of the vigilante community in Gotham City, this name dies with _me_. Arrogant much?”

            Damian let out a breath, setting aside his cup of tea. “You’re not listening to me,” he said.

            Offended, she replied, “Um, I’m literally having a conversation with you, of course I’m listening.”

            “Lian,” said Damian, and she almost didn’t notice him breaking his cardinal rule. “What if I wanted a different name?”

            “But you don’t,” she pointed out. “You just said-”

            He looked at her. The penny dropped.

            “Oh,” she said. “You mean your real name?”

            He shrugged. “Sometimes I think that is my real name.”

            “It’s kinda girly,” she pointed out.

            Sounding genuinely exhausted, he laughed. “Yes,” he said, as if in plea. “That’s the point.”

            There was a long pause. Lian returned his gaze, a frown on her face and then, slowly, it dawned on her. The frown slipped into incredulity, and her mouth dropped open into a little ‘o,’ and then a bigger ‘O,’ and then she set down her coffee and put two hands to her face, leaning over to bury her head in her knees.

            “Oh my _God_ ,” she groaned. “Oh, Damian. I’m a fucking idiot.”

            Without hesitation he reached out to pat her on the back. “No, it’s OK-”

            “No, oh my _God_. Of _course_ ,” she said, sitting back up, revealing her face, flushed red in embarrassment. She reached out to take hold of him, one hand at his, the other on his arm. “Holy shit. I’m sorry, can we go over this one more time? I think – I mean, I think I know what’s going on, but I need a second to process.” She watched him, searching his eyes for some indication of certainty. “Would it be possible for you to take off the mask? I feel like I need to look you in the eyes for this one.”

            Using real names in the field – if Lian even knew what the fuck that meant anymore – was one thing, but removing one’s mask was a whole other ballgame. She didn’t really expect Damian to grant her request, but to her utter surprise, he reached up and peeled the mask away, rubbing at the sticky spirit gum residue it left on his face.

            “You’re fucking trans,” said Lian bluntly. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Jesus, is that what you’ve been trying to tell me for the last six fucking months, and I’ve just been too fucking dense to figure it out?”

            “Well,” he began apologetically, “it’s not as if I ever actually said it out loud.”

            “I _know_ ,” whined Lian, “but I’m supposed to be – I should’ve been able to clock you back when we were _teenagers_ , oh my God, I should’ve – _been there_ for you. Now that I’m thinking about it, God, I should’ve known.” The sight of those orange pill bottles came back to her in a flash. “I mean, all those visits to the doctor, like-?”

            “No, actually,” said Damian quickly. “That’s not – for this. That’s for something else.”

            She watched him, concern written across her brow. “For your OCD?” He nodded. “I thought that was better.”

            He gave a shrug, lifting one hand up, open palm facing the sky. “I did too.”

            “Why do you take your meds on patrol?”

            “It’s as needed.”

            In the distance a police siren went off, wailing into the night. Immediately Damian’s body tensed and he looked ready to spring to his feet, but Lian held firmly onto him. “They can handle it,” she said. “Listen. Damian – Robin – I’m sorry. And I’m glad you told me. And I’m absolutely here for you from now on out. OK?”

            “Hold on,” he said; there was a slight uneasiness in his expression, which spooked her. “It’s…complicated.”

            “Yeah, I fucking bet,” she said sympathetically. “But everyone comes out on their own timeline, and I can help you-”

            “No,” he sighed, cutting her off. He reached over to pick up the Hot Cheetos he’d put aside and opened the bag, offering it to her first. She graciously accepted, and picked a handful out of the bag. “I know what you’re thinking right now, and it isn’t that simple. My whole life I’ve been one thing. I thought because I didn’t like it – because I couldn’t do it right, somehow – that I must be another thing. But,” he hesitated, searching for the words, “I don’t think I could walk away from this.” He gestured to himself. “Not completely.”

            It sounded basically, to Lian, like he was still solidly in the questioning phase. “OK,” she said again, nodding. “I hear you. And I will be there to support you no matter where you end up.”

            “Thank you,” he answered. “I appreciate that.”

            “Yeah.”

            There was a short silence between them.

            And then Lian said, “Fuck. I feel like an entire paradigm of my fucking life has just been altered, and suddenly everything makes so much fucking sense.”

            Damian let out a bark of laughter. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

\---

_day 286_

            When they went out now, neither of them really drank. Lian had never liked getting really fucked up, and Damian was self-conscious about his drunkenness around her now, so the two shots they took together (and a third Damian had taken off some guy’s navel) had more or less worn off by the time they got back to the apartment. It wasn’t late, because Damian had class tomorrow, and the night had been nice but also kind of boring. Neither of them were tired, both a little restless. Lian turned on Netflix, and then Damian poured himself a glass of wine and called from the kitchen if Lian wanted any.

            Between the two of them they finished the whole bottle. She laid across the couch, tucking her cold feet under his leg for warmth. While some shitty movie played out before them they talked about the night, about this girl Lian had been almost dating but who ghosted her last week for no apparent reason. “Hey, next time you’re out,” said Damian, reaching out to put his hand on her leg, “let me know if you’ll be gone the night? I was worried about you.”

            “Sorry,” she said, grinning at him. “Sometimes you forget to check in with Daddy when you’re in the midst of mind-blowing, clit-numbing lovemaking.”

            “I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “Don’t call me that?”

            “Not tonight?”

            “Not tonight.”

            She grinned at him, then sat up. “Good,” she said. “I like girl Damian better.”

            He returned the grin, but before he could move she sprang up to her feet. She stretched her arms upwards above her head like a cat. “I’m serious about the beard though,” she called, heading into the bathroom, leaving the door open as she took out some makeup wipes. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good look, but just, probably better on someone else. No offense.”

            “None taken,” Damian replied, raising his voice to be heard. He ran his hand across his face, felt the stubble there. _Beard_ was generous, but after staying meticulously clean-shaven for a month or so the task was starting to feel too daunting, and he kind of missed the feeling. Unfortunately at the moment he was also growing out his hair just a little bit, and the mess of curls combined with a half grown-in beard was not a good look.

            He got up and followed her to the bathroom, scooting in beside her at the sink. “Um, excuse you,” she said, looking at him. “I was here.”

            “We both fit,” he replied simply, fetching his toothbrush.

            She reached out and took his hand, the one which held his toothbrush. Plucking it away from him, she placed it down on the counter. “Rude,” she said.

            They looked at each other, and then they kissed. It happened very quickly; they kissed, and then his hands snapped down to her waist, and he lifted her slightly, up onto the countertop. His hair hung in his face slightly, curly, and his stubble scratched against her face, which was a new experience. The kissing lasted for a few minutes, all quiet except for the sucking, wet noises of mouths connected, lips being licked and bitten – then they pulled away slightly, and laughed. They kissed again, with more urgency this time; Damian wrapped his hands gently around her face, his thumb trailing across her jaw, and her body pressed forward first, against his, searching for friction.

            All this happened before they knew it, and the feel of Lian’s body against his took Damian so absolutely by surprise that he pulled back. His lips were pink and a little swollen from kissing, his eyes cloudy with what may have been arousal, or maybe just the wine.

            “Lian?” he asked.

            She sort of settled forward, placing her hands on his shoulders, looking down the side of his face, past his neck, watching the place where his shirt began. “Yeah?”

            He asked her, breathlessly, “Do you want to have sex?” and she replied, “Yeah.”

            They were both cautious, conservative, exploratory: asking permission before each new movement, going slowly as if this were new and strange for them both, full of, _Is that OK?_ s and _Does that feel right?_ s which gradually gave way to shuddery grunts and breathy moans. It was not by far the best sex either of them had ever had – it reminded Damian a little bit of his first and only time with Iris, except he’d been pretty passive back then, too nervous to communicate quite as much as he did now; but it was simple and organic, for both an intimacy with the other they’d craved before, though maybe they’d been too proud to admit it.

            He didn’t fuck her, which she was secretly grateful for. She offered, but he turned her down; it was a complicated place for him to be, she thought, dysphoric in the depth of his arousal. From the way he touched her with a sort of delicate reverence it was clear to Lian that this was a kind of catharsis for him, mapping out on her body his wants and desires, the things he was envious of and the ways he _wanted_ to touch or be touched, but couldn’t. It was an exercise in vulnerability, and Lian found herself moved more than she had anticipated.

            At one point, she touched him, and he shied away. “Hey,” she said, looking up at him. “I know I’ve never really done this before, but I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.”

            “It’s OK,” he said, reaching down to her. “You don’t have to.”

            “I know I don’t _have_ to, I want to.”

            “It’s OK, Lian.”

            “I haven’t even started-”

            “Lian,” he said, cutting her off. “Please stop.”

            She looked at him, then nodded, sliding up his body to lie on his chest. “Yeah,” she said, brushing his hair off his forehead. “Of course.” They held each other for a moment, and then she asked, “Do you still want to do this?”

            He didn’t say anything. And then he nodded his head.

            “Are you sure?” she asked, sitting up slightly on his chest.

            “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure. Please.”

            “Well,” she said, with a grin, “since you said _please_ …”

            Lian was surprised when he came, because she didn’t think he was going to let himself. But he did, and it was not as bad as it looked in the extremely limited straight porn she’d seen. Despite herself she actually kind of liked it – not the act itself, but when she kissed Damian after he finished, he smiled against her lips.

            “Hey,” she said, patting him on the cheek. “Good job.”

            He let out a little laugh, then wrapped his arms around her back. “Thanks,” he said. “You too.”

\---

_day 351_

            “Hey Damian,” she said; they were on his bed, sheets tangled halfway across their bodies. The air was black and biblical, dense in post-coital fog.

            They had talked about names, and about pronouns; he’d tried some things out, but he found it difficult to identify with anything except for the name that was given to him as a child. Honestly, trying hard to understand, Lian had said to him, “I mean, like, I guess the point is that you _don’t_ have to change it if you don’t want to. It doesn’t really matter? Like whatever you go by ends up being a girl’s name by virtue of the fact that you are, you know,” she licked her lips, hoping she was getting this right, “sometimes a girl.”

            Pronouns were still a hazy game. He wasn’t out to anyone but her and she only ever talked about him in the third person to other people, so nothing had really changed. But she braided his hair sometimes, painted his nails more frequently. She did his makeup once, red lip and smoky golden eye before they went out to a club. Most of it was more mundane than that: it was a matter of slow transformation, somehow almost more on Lian’s part than Damian’s. It was changing the way she looked at him, the way she understood him, making him intelligible to her in a way she had for a long time never even considered.

            It was impossible, she thought, not to love someone who trusted you so deeply. But maybe that was backwards. Maybe it was because she loved him that he had finally decided to trust her.

            In the bedroom, Damian glanced at her. He had not completely undressed, which Lian had come to understand was evidence of a particularly dysphoric day. “Yes?”

            “Have you ever thought about transitioning?”

            He looked at her. The room was so dark that she could barely make out his expression. “I’ve thought about it.”

            “And?”

            He looked away from her, back up at the ceiling. “I couldn’t.”

            “You absolutely could. Absolutely.”

            “You know that there are days when I don’t exactly mind looking like a Calvin Klein underwear model.”

            “You’re more of a Tom Ford type. And I also know there are days, I think more and more lately, where you do mind.”

            “I couldn’t do it,” he said again, with more conviction. “I can’t imagine it.”

            “I know you _do_ imagine it, Damian.”

            “Fantasy is different from reality.”

            Lian turned over onto her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows. “Not when your daddy’s a fucking billionaire. And I know you’ve been trying not to think about it, but you _know_ he’d be OK if you told him. You guys left on the bad note but he’s your dad. He loves you.”

            “You don’t know my father, Lian.”

            “He’s Batman, dumbass, he’s not a _bad_ dude. It’s OK.”

            But Damian said nothing in reply to this, merely staring up at the ceiling. When Damian thought about his parents, what monstrous reaction they might have if they ever found out, often it was not his father’s response he feared. He could not voice that to Lian. She had dealt with her own ghosts when it came to the specter of a villainous mother always hanging just beyond reach, and Damian didn’t want to trouble her with the confession that he could not learn to hate his mother as easily as Lian had. A part of him deep in his core still thought about his mother, wondered if she would want to see him again. Sometimes he wondered what she thought of him, if she thought he’d done well, if she thought he’d been good enough. He knew wondering these things would only hurt him, and no answer would ever satisfy him.

            Still. He could not help but imagine what she would think, she who had engineered him into perfection. He imagined she might consider it a betrayal, an insult to her deliberately-crafted masterpiece: a son by design.

            “No,” he said, with finality. “I couldn’t.”

            There was a long silence between them. Then Lian reached out and put her hand on his cheek, and she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his forehead. Her kiss lasted a long moment. When she pulled away, she whispered into his ear. “OK. I love you.”

            He didn’t reply.

\---

_day 635_

            “He doesn’t fucking _know_?”

            “Arsenal,” said Damian, his gaze snapping towards her. “Language.”

            “Hold on,” Lian replied, shaking her head. They were in Las Vegas; Jai had called a week ago with the assignment and with no real explanation when Damian asked him, bluntly, why he didn’t just take care of it himself.

            “I don’t know,” Jai had answered, hesitant on the phone. “I figured Vegas is more your speed than mine, I guess.” Damian had then gone on to surprise Jai further by inquiring about his sister. “I don’t know about her either,” he’d answered. “But if I see her, I’ll tell her you asked.

            Damian thanked him, hung up the phone, and then called his boyfriend, Adam. “Hello,” he’d said, when Adam answered. “Do you want to go to Vegas?”

            So it was a week later that Damian stood with Lian atop the Palazzo in Las Vegas, having just interrogated a low life henchman by dangling him off the rooftop. They deposited him in an unconscious heap on the stairwell, and were about to plan their next move when Damian mentioned Adam, asleep in a suite in the hotel below them. The strip was lit up with artificial light despite the fact that it was quickly approaching four in the morning. So high up, there was a cold wind coming in from the west, sending Lian’s shoulder-length hair whipping about her face. Damian had recently cut his hair, but the wind sent his yellow cape twisting out behind him, drawing attention to its bright color.

            “Hold up,” Lian said, raising her hands to indicate a timeout. She brushed hair out of her face, trying to tuck it behind her ear. “We need to backtrack a little. Are you saying that Adam doesn’t know you’re up here, you know,” she gestured around them, “superheroing?”

            Damian eyed her warily. “No,” he said. “He doesn’t know about this.”

            “ _What_?” asked Lian, in disbelief. “What? You’ve been dating that asshole for six fucking months, and you’re telling me he doesn’t know you’re Robin?”

            Before the words were fully out of her mouth, Damian was shaking his head. “It hasn’t been six months.”

            “Don’t be a pedantic bitch, Robin, in my world drunkenly making out in a club the first time you met does in fact a boyfriend make.”

            “Arsenal, please. I was still sleeping with you in February.”

            It was May. “Sure, and since when has that stopped you from macking on guys?”

            Damian’s jaw clenched slightly as he watched her. She returned that look defiantly, daring him to say what was on the tip of his tongue. “Are you,” he began, and _fuck_ , he was actually going to say it out loud, wasn’t he, “…jealous?”

            “Fuck off,” she said, raising a middle finger at him. “This isn’t about me, it’s about you, and the fact that your serious long-term actual real life boyfriend not only doesn’t know about your extracurricular activities, but also actively hates them.”

            Already Damian was shaking his head, waving this away. “He doesn’t hate it, he just – has strong opinions on the crumbling state of institutional justice in America.”

            “’Cause he thinks vigilantes like you and your entire family are undermining the criminal justice system! I’ve heard him go on about his dissertation, he never shuts the fuck up about it. Oh my _God_ ,” she groaned, her hands at her face. “He thinks you invited me on a romantic weekend trip to Vegas with you guys, just _because_? What, did you tell him I’d be down for a fucking threesome?”

            “No, of course not,” protested Damian. “He’d never even think of that, please.”

            “Yeah, you’re right, he wouldn’t,” Lian shot back at him. “Because he doesn’t know about that either, does he?”

            Damian didn’t answer her. There was a look of forced disappointment on his face, as if he hoped he could shame her into shutting up. But for months now Damian had been dating Adam, who was mostly cool when he wasn’t being an insufferable douchebag – and he was smart, and cultured, and he and Damian spoke Arabic sometimes together. All of this made Damian happy, and Lian was such a sappy gay dumbass that it made her happy that Damian was happy, even if Adam was one of those obnoxious gay guys for whom gender identity was a straightforward thing across the board. Despite herself Lian had found herself repeatedly offended on Damian’s behalf, even when Damian insisted Adam’s little insensitivities were alright.

            Maybe more of this than Lian would like to admit was the fact that the way Adam talked reminded her of herself a few years ago, before all of this with Damian. It wasn’t an intentional ignorance, but rather a consequence of being so confident in your own identity for so long that you’d never even thought to examine the stupid shit you sometimes say, like Adam’s super fucking dumb _I <3 Cock _t-shirt which, though functionally accurate in Damian’s case, still rubbed Lian completely the wrong way because it was generally transphobic.

            But the way Lian phrased her question to Damian had been intentionally ambiguous. No, Adam didn’t know that Damian’s gender identity was more complex than it appeared. He also didn’t know about Damian and Lian, about the months spent as almost-something, vital and intimate with one another, but always safely platonic. They loved each other, yes, but there was nothing romantic about it. Over the past year or so it had just sort of become a fact of life.

            Damian touched a commlink at his ear. “Let’s go,” he said, heading away from Lian, towards the edge of the building. “We’re not done.”

            “No, we’re not,” she agreed, following him to the edge. Beneath them the base of the hotel was crisscrossed with artificial canals, no gondolas gliding along them at this late hour. Both Damian and Lian had been to Venice, both with Iris, though years apart. Standing on the ledge of a roof fifty-three stories up, neither of them thought of her.

            Lian took Damian’s hand.

            “You should tell him,” she said.

            His eyes scanned the city landscape below. “I know.”

            “He really loves you. He really does. But, you know. I had to learn. So does he.”

            There was a short silence, except for the whistle of the wind and the bustle of the strip below. Damian turned, his eyes hidden by the lenses of his mask, and he leaned down to kiss her.

            Lian held up her fingers, in between their lips. There was an apologetic smile on her face. “You have to tell him,” she repeated.

            At this, Damian’s expression turned slightly cautious. “I wasn’t trying to-”

            “I know you weren’t,” she assured him, squeezing his hand. “It’s OK. C’mon, let’s do this.”

             Lian cast a grappling hook across to the rooftop edge of the Venetian, where their intel led them next. She handed it to Damian, who expertly wrapped his arm around her midsection, squarely below her center of gravity. She held on to him, regretting how much smaller she was than him, how the physics weren’t really on their side when it came to reversing their roles in this particular action. She would like very much to hold his weight, to ask him to cling on to her as she swung across the city.

            But some things, and Lian had come to understand that Damian too was one of these things, are hard to change.

            Lightly, Damian stepped forward, into thin air.

            They fell together, swinging in a graceful arc. For one exhilarating moment before the line pulled taut, they were suspended in air, weightless and free.


End file.
